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Potential issues after applying Office updates
Microsoft Word templates.
Microsoft Word templates is one of the areas within your Microsoft Dynamics GP solution that has been affected by Microsoft's hardening of security and security best practices.
What is the issue?
Word templates will not email or print after Office update.
Who is affected?
Clients who are using Word templates, using the .docx extension, and who have updated any Office builds since 8th September 2020.
This could also affect the recipient: if the email has been sent using Microsoft Dynamics GP Word template to a recipient using the .docx extension after updating Office, they will not be able to open the .docx document.
What is the fix?
Microsoft has re-written the Word templates functionality to take into account the security changes made by the Office team. These are now available in the latest updates for Microsoft Dynamics GP (18.3x) and Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 (specifically build 16.00.0814 - the 2020 US year end update or above).
Please note: Microsoft indicated there will be no fixes released for earlier versions of Microsoft Dynamics GP, including GP 2015 or prior.
What are the workarounds?
As updating Microsoft Dynamics GP usually takes some time to prepare for, there are a number of things you can do immediately to work around the potential issue.
Simply pause your Office updates so they don't update past, or including, any September 2020 builds. If you have updated Office already, you can revert your Office install to a build before this issue presented itself. Naturally, pausing Office updates is not the recommended approach, nor the only approach you could take.
There are other potential workarounds that you might be able to use. These include generating and directly sending the document as a PDF, without saving the file as a .docx extension. Another option might be to generate the report directly to a file, then use a utility that Microsoft has provided (in this link). Beware the fix utility might work fine for a one off process, but it does add additional steps which are not ideal on an ongoing basis.
Considering a Microsoft Dynamics GP upgrade?
If you are considering upgrading your Microsoft Dynamics GP solution to get the latest Word template compatibility with Office, you can find more about your options, and how and why to upgrade, here.
Other security trends for your consideration:
You can learn more about the other security challenges that we are finding within our client base, and what you can do, below: